What you can do to help
From Sagataflwiki
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[[Article format guidelines]] | [[Article format guidelines]] | ||
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Revision as of 23:40, 15 July 2010
This page contains suggestions for what you can do to help with the Sagatafl design and documentation project.
Contents |
Fix obvious errors
If you see errors of grammar, spelling, punctuation or similar, or errors of layout, feel free to fix them. As long as you are not changing the meaning of the content of the article at all, please mark your edit as "minor".
Participate on article Discussion pages
You can go to the Discussion page for any article, and voice your concerns, e.g. about rules that are unclear (ambiguous, open to interpretation, more GM-dependent than they have to be), or give suggestions for how the text or the rules in the article can be improved, e.g. made more flexible, or made more fudge-light.
Turn words into internal links
This isn't so much a wiki, as it is a hypertext that happens to use wiki software to be presented and modified (displayed and edited). Much of the point is that the reader of this hypertext should be able to get from any article to any other article with as few clicks as possible, and the more related two articles are, in terms of subject matter, the fewer clicks should be required.
Therefore you can use the "edit" tab to turn words into internal links, so that the reader can click on those links to get to the articles defining and elaborating on what those words mean. Don't worry about creating links for articles that don't exist yet (but do check that there isn't already an article defining the term that is spelled slightly differently), and feel free to turn the same word into external links multiple times in the same article. It is a bother for the user to have to scroll up and down, in order to find a clickable instance of a word.
Add categories to pages
First read the previous section.
All done? Okay. Another way to empower the reader to get from any article to any one other article, as fast as possible, is by adding categories to articles. This is very simple, and here I'll explain how it is done:
(Actually I've forgotten how to add categoris, so I'll have to find an explanation and then paraphrase it here.)
Don't worry about adding nonexistent categories, as long as you've made sure that there isn't already another existing category, perhaps spelled slightly differently, that does the job. If you do invent a new category (which is perfectly okay), you can search through the other articles in this wiki, and add all the relevant ones to your new category.
Remember: It's about speed, and reader friendliness.
Create illustrations and diagrams
I don't want this wiki to be full of fancy images, JPGs and GIFs of dragons and sorceresses and wizards. A few photos or drawings to make it clear that this wiki is about a tabletop RPG would be very welcome, as well as a few drawings illustrating the principles behind Sagatafl (that it is about playing a game rather than about sucking up to the big fat metagame entity sitting over there behind the GM's screen), but other than that the most welcome graphical additions are illustrations. Graphs that demonstrate things, e.g. how skill learning speed works (the effect of the Plateau Value, for instance, for different APT values), and diagrams that show the order in which things are done, such as combat, or checkbox diagrams, such as for Invention.
Table Aids, collections of procedures and tables for direct reference and use during the actual play session, are also very welcome, in PDF format preferably, but make sure to datestamp these (including the year) so taht GMs or players don't unwittingly bring outdated rules to the table.
Note that as an approved user, you cannot upload files yourself, you have to either be a semi-approved user, or else send the files to another user who is semi-approved or better and get him to upload the files. One way to "earn" semi-approved status is by creating a lot of really useful diagrams and illustrations, and flooding the Designer's email inbox with them.
Add external links
I really don't want a lot of external links in this wiki, other than to the (not yet created) Sagatafl wiki. Also be wary of links to other people's wikis where the content may change radically without warning, e.g. an external link to an article about a controversial subject in English Wikipedia. If you really want to add external links to wiki articles about controversial subject matter (e.g. biological differences between individuals, or the human sexes), make sure you add links to static article versions, so that you know what you're linking to and that the content you link to won't ever change.
Also avoid external links to articles written from a point view very alien to that of Sagatafl, e.g. the depressingly common meme that the GM is a god.
Apart from the above, if you think something would be really useful for a Sagatafl GM or a Sagatafl player, link to it.
Likewise, if you find an external link that is problematic, either delete it right away, or delete it and link to a better replacement ressource, or the issue is less critical, contact the Designer or some other higher and more experienced editor than yourself and point out the issue.
You are probably smarter than you assume
You are probably right.
If you think that a given word in a specific article should be turned into an internal link, it probably should.
If you think an article ought to have added one more category tag to it, it probably ought to.
If you think a particular sentence is needlessly complicated, then it either is needlessly complicated, or else it is worded in a very precise manner so as to minimize room for interpretation (or ideally remove it completely) so that players can sit down at the table knowing what to expect.
This hypertest is meant to be read, and it is meant to be nagivated
Both should be as efficient as possible. Hyperlinkify! Categorize! It's really hard to do actual damage this way, so go ahead. Every such little change you make increases the value of this hypertext.
(Note that as you speed up navigation, by hyperlinkifying and categorizing, you also speed up editing, and you make rules creation and rules improvement more efficient. It's a win-win situation.)
